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“Nation’s first” smart gun symposium talks safety, risks, and delays

"We can't afford a 404 error code," says a major industry player.

New Jersey State Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, seen here receiving a Seattle Seahawks jersey at Wednesday's Smart Gun Symposium. "I'm a Giants fan," Weinberg said, "but they didn't do so well this year."

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SEATTLE—On Wednesday, the Washington Technology Industry Association hosted the Seattle International Smart Gun Symposium, an event that King County Sheriff John Urquhart called the "first symposium I've heard of anywhere about this topic." The hours-long series of panels invited lawmakers, smart gun industry representatives, and gun safety advocates to speak on the subject of "user authorized" guns—meaning firearms that can only discharge in the hands of pre-authorized owners.

Notably, the panels lacked anyone who identified primarily as an advocate of gun rights, gun manufacturing, or an organization such as the National Rifle Association, but panelists repeatedly acknowledged, if not answered, concerns about how a rise in smart gun technology might impact Americans' Second Amendment rights. Still, such perspective was clearly overshadowed by the concerns raised most loudly by New Jersey State Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, herself the author of her state's Childproof Handgun Law.

"What gun owner wouldn’t want a gun that, if it got into hands of a child, would be rendered inoperable?" Weinberg asked the crowd after listing off stories and statistics about handgun deaths—particularly that of 10,000 American children and teens who go to an emergency room every year due to firearm incidents. "As a mother, a grandmother, a lawmaker, and a citizen who believes in policy [to increase public safety], childproofing handguns was common sense."

The law that Weinberg authored in 2002 came with a specific timeline: Once a handgun was sold anywhere in the United States with a working user-authentication system—like Armatix's iP1, which only functions so long as an RFID-enabled wristband is worn within 10 inches of the pistol—a 30-month countdown would begin, after which point all new guns sold in New Jersey would have to include some form of "smart" authentication. Weinberg told a story of the bill's genesis and signing, then mentioned that the countdown had yet to begin because stores that nearly began selling the iP1 received death and arson threats until they changed course.

Weinberg insisted that she offered a deal to the NRA: "If you encourage your members not to interfere with the research, development, manufacture, distribution, and retail sale of this technology, I will work to repeal the law in Jersey," believing the free market would be advocate enough for smart guns. "We never got an answer," she told the Seattle crowd.

“Causing fear in the gun community”

The event's opening press conference included three executives who represented prospective smart gun products: Sentinl, an add-on fingerprint sensor for existing handguns; TriggerSmart, an RFID-enabled system for existing and brand-new guns; and Allied Biometrix, a company working on fully-integrated biometric sensors that unlock a gun once they sense an individual's "reflexive actions" and "grip style" (based off technology developed by the New Jersey Institute of Technology).

All three companies have in common a "smart gun" philosophy of attempting to ensure that guns can only be fired by authorized users, as opposed to children who swipe a gun from a parent's cabinet, thieves who steal a gun, or apprehended suspects who take a firearm from a police officer. The three companies also have in common the lack of a ready-for-market product (and notably, Armatix wasn't in attendance). Sentinl and Triggersmart's representatives expressed an interest in having products available by the end of this year, but Allied Biometrix had a more measured stance on rushing to market.

"As marketers, one might think it’s counter-intuitive not to be the first to market," Allied Biometrix CEO Alan Boinus said. "But this business is a little different. We have challenges beyond technology—challenges in legislation, challenges in the controversy. We can’t afford a 404 error code... and we don’t want bad actors entering the marketplace with less-than-reliable guns and causing fear in the gun community that this might, no pun intended, trigger the New Jersey laws."

Ars asked the representatives from smart gun companies about in-the-field reliability—about moisture, blood, gloves, and other factors that need to be tested to ensure that a smart gun might not lock its owner out in a dire moment. Boinus didn't answer whether his company had conducted such tests yet, instead stating, "it's a money issue. Where are we going to have the money for testing?" Sentinl founder Omer Kiyani went further, saying his fingerprint-sensing technology's "target audience... is not typically in the mud and all that" and that "this is a safety device for home storage."

“Not ready for my officers yet”

King County Sheriff John Urquhart was on hand in another panel to remark on both the potential of smart guns and what he considered technology that "wasn't ready for prime time."

"I’m probably the only person in this room who has zipped kids into bodybags," Urquhart told the crowd. "We pick up kids who have killed themselves with other people's handguns. We don’t like that." He also mentioned a statistic about over 500 American police officers in the past decade being killed with their own handguns by apprehended suspects—including one he personally knew. "Any tech to make that better is a good thing. That being said, [smart gun technology] is not ready for my officers yet. If it worked 110 percent of the time, I’d be interested."

Urquhart explained the skepticism his police peers have about any eventual smart guns: "With current guns, you can look at the parts. If we don’t clean them, they’ll go bad on us. But you can’t see electronics." He added that laser sights, the last major handgun innovation he could think of, remain uncommon across the country because departments "don't want officers to rely on such technology," but that should smart gun technology advance to a point where he was comfortable with it, he wouldn't see a financial or logistical roadblock to upgrading his force's hardware. "If it was gonna save lives, and the lives of my officers, I’d spend that kind money, and the council would approve it."

The symposium was unable to reach a consensus about any possible smart gun mandate—a concept whose legality has yet to be fully tested in any major court. One member of the crowd, who identified herself as a lawyer, cited the decision from the 2008 Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller and focused on its mention of "operable" handguns. As a result of that precedent, if a state or federal mandate came down about smart guns, and such guns' reliability had been proven without a shadow of a doubt, a mandate might ultimately be upheld, the audience member said.